A newly invigorated Intel is pulling out all of the stops to
stay ahead of AMD these days. Intel's Core 2 Duo Extreme is putting out some
rather encouraging
numbers and should keep AMD working hard for the next few quarters. And
shortly after aggressive
pricing was revealed for Intel's new Core 2 family of processors, AMD
responded with its own
price cuts across the board to stay in the game. With its mainstream
desktop products taken care of, and its new Core 2 mobile processors
on the way, Intel is looking forward to updates to its server processors.

Intel's Woodcrest
processors look to make up for the sins of the father, in this case the current
Xeon, by increasing performance by 80% while lowering power consumption by 35%.
Even more impressive is Intel's ramp of the Woodcrest
-- by the end of 2006, Intel is expecting that 90% of the Xeon processors that
it ships will be dual core. Two thirds of those dual-core offerings will be Woodcrest based according to Intel.

Just around the same time that Intel releases its quad-core Kentsfield desktop processors in Q1'07,
quad-core Clovertown server
processors will also make an appearance. According to Intel's Enterprise Architecture Director Dileep Bhandarkar,
Clovertown will be two dual-core
processors built into a single package versus AMD's single package of four
cores. Bhandarkar also conceded that the lack of an integrated memory
controller, like those on the AMD64 platform, does hurt performance. EWEEKreports:

Bhandarkar admitted
that integrating the memory controller—which handles the flow of data to and
from system memory—directly into the chip rather than housing it on a chip set
would improve performance with some workloads. However, he said, Intel
officials felt it was more important to bring a quad-core processor to the
market before AMD does. The company expects to precede its rival by a quarter
or two.

Still, Bhandarkar feels that its server products will offer
enough of performance advantage that it won’t need to delve into integrated
memory controllers for now. In the mean time, integrated memory controllers are
definitely in the pipeline as is an integrated graphics controller, but no
timeline was given for either.

"Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment -- same piece of hardware -- paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that's a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be." -- Steve Ballmer